Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck, Wayne Winterrowd

From the Publisher

This is the third book we have written together, though separately we have written others . . . But to say ‘written separately’ makes no sense, for when two lives have been bent for so many years on one central enterprise—in this case, gardening—there really is no such thing as separately.”

With these words, the renowned garden designers Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd begin their entertaining, fascinating, and unexpectedly moving book about the life and garden they share. The book contains much sound information about the cultivation of plants and their value in the landscape, and invaluable advice about Eck and Winterrowd’s area of expertise: garden design. There are chapters about the various parts of their garden, and sections about particular plants—roses and lilacs, snowdrops and cyclamen—and vegetables. The authors also discuss the development of their garden over time, and the dark issue that weighs more and more on their minds: its eventual decline and demise. Our Life in Gardens is a deeply satisfying perspective on gardening, and on life.

The New York Times - Dominique Browning

Once you wander into this book, you won't be able to sit still for long…what with having to scurry around looking for paper and pen to take notes on just a few more plants you must have, and leaping up to consult the pictures in your American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. This is a generous, thoughtful, inspiring book…Eck and Winterrowd are funny, affectionate, wise and snobbish exactly when you want them to be.

Publishers Weekly

"Plants, like words in poetry," observe Eck and Winterrowd (founders of the Vermont garden design firm North Hill), "are both beautiful in themselves and also for the associations they trail behind, the histories they have in the world and in one's own life." In nearly 50 erudite and entertaining essays stretching alphabetically from Agapanthus to Xanthorrhoea quadrangulate, Eck and Winterrowd share the history of their Vermont garden, writing about the plants they have lived with, nurtured and nourished, in a sort of inverse family memoir, where the parent remembers the children-the trouble-free, the troubling and the troubled. "Helleborus orientalis," for example, "is an entirely amiable plant," while the "wisteria flower most freely under abuse... violent root pruning and frequent hacking back of top growth to encourage abundant flower." Any gardener may find its specific (and sometime technical) advice helpful, but walkers among gardens and those who dream of gardening will find special pleasure in plant lore and history and in the lucid descriptions that render them visible. Eck and Winterrowd describe their book as "a mixed bag, a gypsy trunk of this and that," but treasure chest is more accurate; the essays are gems, not baubles. (Feb.)

Sue O'Brien - Library Journal

Garden designers Eck and Winterrowd (coauthors, The Year at North Hill: Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden and Living Seasonally: The Kitchen and the Table at North Hill) take us back to their garden, North Hill, in an essay collection to be especially savored on cold, snowy winter nights while eagerly awaiting spring. The short essays cover everything from boxwood to primroses to vegetable gardens and allow the authors to share their favorite plants, their successes and failures, the trials and rewards of gardening in a cold climate, and the evolution of their gardening, both indoors and out, over several decades. Packed with useful information and myriad plants, lovingly described, for gardeners to try in their own gardens, their book also eloquently conveys the importance of plants and gardening in their lives. Lyrically written, this true pleasure is recommended for public and horticultural libraries.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents